


And Once More

by Prix



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death, Friendship, Gen, Immortality, Risk-taking, ToT: Trick - Freeform, canon compliant (I think), ideological differences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-29 23:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20805083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: A brief look into Clara Oswald's postmortem life.





	And Once More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kira_katrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/gifts).

Clara chooses to accept her fate. She chooses to go back to Gallifrey, to turn herself in and return to the moment her life was ended.  _ The long way ‘round _ . She knows what those words have meant to the Doctor, because she knows more about the Doctor than most of the universe. In fact, there is too much for it to be contained in her mind all at once. For the past several years, she has known it only in glimpses and in dreams. But then, she wonders if perhaps she is no longer bound by such constraints. After all, she can hardly call herself human anymore.  


Her companion in their stolen TARDIS is enough to answer her curiosity before it can get very far. The young woman she spends stolen time with is proof enough that a human brain is a human brain, barring miracles and curses. She has known more things than she will ever remember, and she has wanted to forget some of them. She has lost even the thread that tied her to the name that Clara still holds easily, quietly in her mind.  


She wonders if, one day, she will lose it, too.  


She does not think she will ever let go of  _ Clara _ . She has already seen the recognition fade from the Doctor’s eyes, and she has to hold onto herself, if only for what was given up for her.  


She presses through days and grief and unanswerable questions with adventure.  


This TARDIS is different. It is not quite so opinionated as the Doctor’s. At least not yet. It generally listens to direction, and it rarely veers off course. She hopes that’s a good thing, though it sometimes presses her for ideas about where to go. Only, she cannot do that. After all, the quiet makes her deathly aware - pardon the pun - of the lack of pulse, of the way her breathing is only a habit, and of the fact that she is very late for a certain appointment that she has no choice but to one day keep.  


Ashildr | Me holds no such about continuing to run away and stay in places they don’t belong forever. Clara - sometimes a bit sourly - wonders if it is because she still has a pulse. One night after some drinking before a particularly weird and brilliant sunset, she braces herself across from Ashildr | Me and holds her hand as if intent on arm-wrestling. Instead, they both hold the grip and each other’s eyes. Sometimes they glare, sometimes they laugh. Finally, Ashildr | Me tilts her head and laughs, looking along Clara’s forearm as if for some parlor trick.  


“That’s so strange,” she remarks.  


“Thanks,” Clara says a bit pointedly, but Ashildr | Me only looks at her as if she should lean into it. Her centuries of existence have eroded any sense she once had for apologetic decorum.  


Realizing how  _ different _ she and Ashildr | Me are from one another is one of the times when Clara feels lonely.  


Other times are when she remembers her family and her students back home. She wonders about the nature of time and existence and what she is now. She wonders if anyone returns her body to them. She wonders if they ever know or even guess what happened. She wonders if she is a missing person forever. She wonders which is better.  


Ashildr | Me advises her that she should forget about those things. Time will comfort them if nothing else does. Clara knows that what she really means is that time will kill them too.  


Old habits die hard, and she had once told the Doctor that she enjoyed being him for a day. Often in the places they visited, Clara found some fount of corruption or some terribly interesting aberration in the laws of nature and time that made even her now so terribly unnatural skin crawl. Every time, she wants to  _ help them _ .  


Sometimes, Ashildr | Me helps her, but it’s always with a sigh and a flip of her long, full hair - tied back or not. She gets the sense that it is a chore to her, even if she sometimes smiles about it in a way that meets her eyes. It is as if the darkness of seeing so many generations die around her has seeped into Ashildr | Me’s soul, her very being, and that it doesn’t come out no matter how much light Clara shows her by saving lives.  


Clara wonders if she’ll end up that way, too. She regrets that it is the way Ashildr | Me is, but she doesn’t hate her for it. She can’t.  


She has learned once and for all that her judgement isn’t always the best, even if it is easier than ever to grant.  


It is hard to tell time in the TARDIS, traveling through time and not stopping for long. It is even harder now that she no longer needs to sleep or eat or do most of the things that a human body needs to do. Luckily, it seems that the Time Lords were not so heedlessly morbid that they had rendered her body incapable of doing most of the things that a human body could do in everyday life, albeit with the constant reminder that it wasn’t supposed to be able to do those things every time she felt her neck or her wrist for long at all.  


It is hard to tell time, so she isn’t sure how long it is before she begins to sense that Ashildr | Me’s patience with her supposedly heroic gallivanting is truly wearing thin. While Clara finds the greatest sense of peace, purpose, and justification in helping people, it just makes Ashildr | Me look at her sadly across the console.  


“You can’t save them all,” she says, more than once, until it riles Clara just to hear it.  


“I know that,” she tells her. “That’s no excuse for saving none of them,” she insists.  


“It isn’t your responsibility.”  


“That’s the problem. It’s no one’s. And it doesn’t matter if it’s my responsibility or not. I want to.”  


“Suit yourself,” Ashildr | Me finally says.  


On some future occasion, they land in a place that has been torn by war. The air smells of fire, and Clara knows that she hears a child crying somewhere in the distance when she peeks her head out the door.  


“Come on,” Ashildr | Me hisses, rather dangerously, trying to coax Clara’s foot back inside the door. She is holding onto the lever, a threat or a promise to set the TARDIS back into motion. Clara winces against the terrible scent in the air, but she doesn’t look back. She only gently, slowly pulls the door closed behind her, because she knows why Ashildr | Me cannot bear the sound. Why she shouldn’t have to. “Clara!” she hears behind her.  


“I have to go,” she says. “You.. don’t have to wait for me,” she says.  


“Of course I have to,” Ashildr | Me scoffs.  


Clara does look back then. She tries to read the specific shade of dark pain in her eyes, but she hasn’t known her long enough to know her well - not for someone as old as she is.  


“I… understand if you don’t,” she says.  


“You’re insane. If you stay out there, you’ll…”  


“What?” Clara asks, and she feels a bit of dark, surprising mirth creep into her voice. “Die?”  


“What happens if you  _ should _ die out there?” Ashildr | Me demands, using both sense of the word perhaps.  


“I don’t know,” Clara says. “But if it’s… that bad, I’m sure someone will be along to say something about it.”  


“Like who?”  


“Well, it isn’t your responsibility…” Clara says, and she knows that it is obvious from the way she looks around the empty console room who she is thinking it might be. “I’ll…” she says, taking a step backward so that both her feet are on the ground outside, “... see you later, yeah?”  


And she closes the door, turning her back and pressing ahead once more into a deadly fray that may or may not be able to hurt her anymore. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this story! I was kind of trying to vibe off your request for a Ghost AU or similar canonical situation. The contrast between Clara and Ashildr has fascinated me, particularly since they decided to hang out together for a while before Clara ultimately went to set her fate aright. I would imagine that would be a hard thing to finally buckle down and do, particularly the longer you went without doing it. I thought that this was sort of a character study and some thoughts about the nature of life and death - being permanently dead versus being permanently alive and how that would impact Clara as she continued on in that sort of existence. I tried to give it some meat but not to make it laboriously long given the nature of the exchange. Happy Halloween and other spooky days!


End file.
